Two months after the second WTC tower collapsed, George W. Bush started the Transportation Security Administration. A month later, some British douchebag who called himself “Abdel Rahim” but was born Richard Reid tried to blow up his heel.

Two months after the second WTC tower collapsed, George W. Bush started the Transportation Security Administration. A month later, some British douchebag who called himself “Abdel Rahim” but was born Richard Reid tried to blow up his heel. Now we all have to get down on our hands and knees and put our shoes in a TSA bucket before we board a flight. How infuriating. Rahim wasn’t even successful, but he has indelibly stained all our lives, forever. Every time I pull off my shoes at the airport I think of his pursed lips and hideous Jewfro, and I want to stab him. I feel the same way every time I walk by the hellhole that is Ground Zero. Some inbred retards kicked us in the nuts, and we’re still doubled over.

The only thing more ineffectual than Al-Qaeda is the government. The fact that their feud has become the centerpiece our lives is like having the Keystone Kops chase meth heads through your living room. The airports didn’t have to allow the government to take over security. They could simply continue to harbor the airlines’ massive incentive to have safe flights and then bill the Feds. Minneapolis is considering it. Unfortunately, there are still people who think the government knows what they’re doing and for now at least, we’re stuck with their insidious “help.”

The wars’ cost recently hit a million million, but the only way extremist Islam can get to us is at the border or on a plane. Racial profiling at these spots is free, but it makes many Americans recoil in horror. Look at how people reacted when Arizona dared to enforce basic immigration laws. Even the president was mad. Huh? Israel’s been racially profiling since before Jews were a race and they haven’t had an incident in decades. Ben-Gurion Airport doesn’t X-ray people into nudity or look under their tits. They use intelligent staff to ask provocative questions and turn up the heat if the answers sound suspicious. My brother is one of the only weirdoes to ever visit Israel for fun. When they saw his thin blond hair, button nose and Scottish last name, they racially profiled him, and he sat in a back room for three hours trying to explain why he was the only white man ever to take the Israel Ministry of Tourism up on their offer. The same techniques were used on a white woman named Anne-Marie Murphy back in 1986. “What’s a white, Irish Catholic doing coming to Israel by herself?” they asked. She explained her Jordanian fiancé had sent her and yes, he packed her suitcase. Bags searched. Semtex located. Jordanian jailed.

Whites are racially profiled all the time. When the CIA hears a mass murderer has a dozen dead kids under the floorboards, they picture Mickey Rooney in a trucker hat, not some swarthy Arab in a turban. Israel happily admits profiling is not ideal but that it works. There are no atheists in foxholes, and there shouldn’t be any egalitarians in exploding planes.

Despite the fear of being branded for life as racial profilers, there are other reasons Americans prefer spending a million million and taking off their clothing rather than noticing Arabs. First, they couldn’t handle the litigation. CAIR would pounce on any dictum that erred on the side of checking Muslims, and any private company who tried it would have their ass sued to smithereens. Second, we staff our airports with derelicts. For some bizarre reason, Canada prides itself on using Sikhs to handle airport security. These hillbillies of the Punjab have been practicing first-cousin marriage for so long, they may as well be Muslims. America’s even worse. I was at JFK a few years ago and after giving exact change for my inflatable pillow, I noticed the East Indian clerk stuffing my ten-dollar bill into her front pocket. I realize she was just working at the store and not handling weapons per se, but she’s still airport staff and wasn’t worried about the law. Israel’s airport staffers are young, have studied their profession in college and are eager to be there. American airports are staffed with ESL dropouts and future Popeye’s employees who work hard riffing with each other about who’s going home first. Now that civil servants have taken over the job, the bar has been lowered even further. At least the previous employees were easy to fire.

As Lord Acton told us back in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We have empowered bureaucratic boobs with our safety, and they’re using this power to make us so mad we’re not going to take it anymore. This week, John Tyner became an Internet sensation after recording himself getting in big trouble for saying, “Don’t touch my junk” to a TSA agent. Then a hysterical three-year-old had her whole body checked for weapons. Then the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network got involved. Things have gotten so out of hand we now have American soldiers carrying rifles and pistols being asked to relinquish their nail clippers. THEY’RE CARRYING RIFLES! Pilots are staying home because they prefer unemployment to the humiliation of showing officials their penis. PILOTS DON’T HAVE TO HIJACK PLANES! THEY’RE DRIVING THEM!

As Anne Coulter pointed out, we need to stop following the terrorists’ last move. They’ve already tried smuggling explosives up their ass. Are anal-cavity searches next? The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures” by federal agents, but political correctness has put us in league with the humorless Brits who recently prosecuted a white nerd for sending an inappropriate Tweet to his girlfriend. Look at this guy!

If flying is ever to become bearable, we need to get the TSA out of the building. Then we have to hire intelligent and qualified people who realize that toddlers and 100-year-old Asian women in wheelchairs are not trying to blow us up.

Discrimination lawsuits are a valid concern, but sophisticated staff can keep such things under their hat. If a reporter asks whether you’re now racially profiling Muslims, don’t tell. CAIR can’t prove shit if nobody writes it down. If I were training post-TSA airport security, I would tell them we do not condone racial profiling as a picture of the 9/11 hijackers appeared on a screen behind me. Then I’d wink. Nobody ever won a court case based on a faulty eyelid.

The “Mean People Suck” community is determined to ignore all this evidence in the name of tolerance, however suicidal it may be. They accept the cost of war and all the increased government interest in our genitalia. They talk about freaks such as “Jihad Jamie” and say even one white software engineer flying his private plane into an IRS building completely negates the merits of racial profiling. Well, how about we retain the odd random check but still institute racial profiling on the sly? Sure, we’ll occasionally pat down the guy from ZZ Top and look into Eddie Izzard’s stilettos, but if you’re wearing a burqa or your last name sounds Arabic, bet your bottom riyal that a college graduate is going to look deep in your eyes and ask you a lot of probing questions. (Thank God a motion to exempt certain religions from searches was shot down.)

As this problem escalates, Americans are showing up to airports in “skimpy gym shorts and tank tops” and publishing lists describing how to sabotage the TSA. They’ve even named the day before Thanksgiving National Opt-Out Day, encouraging passengers to refuse the nudie scanners and go for the “enhanced pat down.” This is inspiring and makes me happy to have immigrated here, but it’s a Band-Aid solution. The only way we’re ever going to get our freedom back is to tell the government to get out of our underpants, then stop pretending the vast majority of the bad guys don’t fit the description. They do.

I’m just curious about how, if we gave whoever carte blanche to do profiling, how it would work. I read a thing in the nypost from a hardcore pro israel guy (who I can’t stand) describing the techniques. He himself has traveled around the middle east so he is imediately under suspicion just because of his passport.

From what I understand in Israel they interview everyone before they get on a plane and do somethign where they don’t announce the gate till the last minute. I just wonder how all that would work on a scale many many times larger than Israel.

One thing. Don’t give me that shitstorm of reactionary whineblog wank fantasies and genuine news outlets and give them equal footing.
I agree with the ridiculous level of intrusive safety involved in travelling, but you’re getting mighty close to the derogatory journalist term of “fucking hack” here.

It is a huge bummer to discover that the website you read for so long because you enjoyed someone’s jokes about how people dress is run by an uninformed Archie Bunker. Why are you putting so much effort on turning this site into the kind of place most people visit here to get away from? You should play to your strengths instead of being another poorly read political commentator; isn’t the internet overstocked with those already?

the difference in the number of airline passengers between the two countries is huge. el al also requires passengers to check-in about 3 hours before their flight. from what i have heard, they pretty much question everyone who flies. so, the argument is that you want to make our flying experience more bearable by moving to that system? oh wait, you want someone to simply pick out would be terrorists based on a set of profiling criteria they learned from an instructional video? the same people you infer are inept – who are these intelligent and qualified people you propose to hire? i know that the palm reader on my block is not doing so well, maybe she would fit the bill?

as was said above, stick to making fun of people, you have a talent for that and have been making a living doing it for some time. you pretty much suck when it comes to making an argument that requires any analytical thought…

I agree that TSA employees shouldn’t be recruited from the ranks of high school dropouts (which for some reason, all of them seem to be) and that common sense should apply to screenings (e.g. pilots and three-year-olds need not be fondled), but why the fuck should I be specially targeted for the egregious searches you’re so angry about? I didn’t do anything except be born swarthy and with a last name no one can pronounce; why does that exempt me from your righteous Libertarian rage against the government feeling people up?

profiling exists tho. I’m assuming you mean like a separate line for brown-ish people. America can choose to do that, and I wouldn’t really be outraged as a brown person, but then ya’ll have to chill out with talking about how free/democratic/peace-loving/post-race you are.

gavin’s at his worst when he’s trying to be provocative, “pushing the envelope” against PC. Snooze. Good for a rise but not so smart if you actually want to solve the problems you’re addressing.

1. as someone said above, do some math and realize why Israel’s approach wouldn’t work in the US. “hire PhD’s for the TSA!” Ha.. welcome to a $1700 flight from NY to Miami.

2. big whoop, you want to profile arabs & muslims. rrright. that will speed up those lines indeed. there are only a couple billion. from 3-year-old black girls to 75-year-old blue-eyed men.. that’s the range of people who could carry, or be hired to carry, or be tricked to carry these weapons.

3. what other suggestions did you make? those are your two brightest ideas?

You’re reading Anne Coulter (really?) and you think she’s the one that came up with the point that the TSA is following the terrorists last moves. Right. And then you go on to say that all the past terrorists were Arab so we should profile Arabs. Hmmm… That would have saved us from Timothy McVeigh. Oh wait, it wouldn’t have.

Gavin should stick to jokes (unless this is supposed to be one.) This is straight up Glenn Beck style pundit territory: it doesn’t matter what sort of cretinous thing is said as long as it gets attention. To echo what was said by others earlier, I read this, but it is basically the opposite of what I visit this site for.

NPR already had some turd blabbing about how fantastic Israel’s system is like a week ago…the official efforts to set up an either-or dialectic between keeping the scanners or switching to the Israel model are designed to limit the range of debate.

How about we do FUCKING NEITHER OF THEM.

In addressing the lame interviewer’s question about “well do you think we should just eliminate the patdowns and keep the scanners? Or keep both?”, this airline pilot they were talking to said that no matter how severe you make your security measures, realistically there is no possible way to forcibly guarantee 100% safety in perpetuity.
If terrorists are really out there, and they really do want to attack, they’ll do it whether there’s full cavity robo-searches or just a subway turnstile to get to the airport. So intensifying our security doesn’t necessarily equate to “more safety” for passengers in the least. But it DOES necessarily mean an erosion of personal liberties along with humiliation on a mass scale. Suddenly targeting people of particular races seems like a dumb non sequitur.

Ceding power to the government over our lives has always proven disastrous, and no matter what we do in regards to airport screening protocol these terrorists we’re so scared of will never relent until the U.S. radically alters its entire approach to foreign diplomacy. Until we finally disengage from all unnecessary foreign conflicts and end our imperialistic “we own the world” campaign, the third world will never stop producing embattled young men ready to do what they perceive as defending their livelihoods, families, and sovereignty.

Personally I think you septics are making a bit of a fucking big deal out of this TSA search shit anyway. You get a pad down search to get into some nightclubs over here and no one gives a shit.
You yanks have got hair trigger sexual assault issues you fucking weirdos. In fact your attitudes to all matters sexual in general make the fucking Victorians look open, balanced and unconflicted in comparison.

I actually feel sorry for some of these TSA jerks having in to pad down the mainly morbidly obese denizens of your litigation happy homeland and then face the further indignation of being told that they’re rockin’ their fuckin’ jollies over it.

It’s the equivalent of those homophobes who won’t use the toilet with homos because they think they might try and rape them. Get the fuck over yourselves.